First of all I'd like to point out that this article is not 'supported' by Intel (surprise surprise!). Solano is still under under non-disclosure and so we don't have any official data sheets at hands. Therefore we are depending on other sources of information as well as the very motherboard we've got for testing.

Basically, i815 is a beefed up 'BX133' for the new millennium with 'optionally' integrated 3D. Its most important spec is of course the support of PC133 SDRAM. Now this is no half-hearted SDRAM support as found in i820/i840, but real native SDRAM support. "RDRAM - no thanks!" is the motto of i815 and it's a pleasure to realize that. As opposed to VIA, Intel knows how to make signal paths short. Solano is probably able to clock the processor front side bus (FSB) asynchronously to the memory bus. A recent article at 'Electronic Buyer's News' suggests that. We can still not give you a definite statement however, since we are lacking hard data on this issue. Our test motherboard was definitely NOT able to do this and the PLL used on the board was an ICS-type and not an IMI.